Developer is About to Die

Ironic to see this given our recent debates over Fallout: New Vegas, and worthy of discussion: The Escapist’s Editor-in-Chief Russ Pitts has written an open letter to the makers of games, asking them to stop making broken ones. I quote:

How many of you know your history? How many of you know that the videogame industry, often considered “recession proof” once suffered a major crash, in the 1980s during the last great economic recession? How many of you know the reason the industry suffered so badly was because you (or your predecessors) were making bad games?

Brief rant follows.

Russ is a pretty awesome guy and one of the greatest writers in the business. If you haven’t followed his work, you owe it to yourself to take part of the day and read some of his older stuff, watch Game Dogs, and appreciate the goodness of the universe that someone like him is in a position of power like EIC at The Escapist. The core of his open letter isn’t a lecture to game developers, it’s a reminder of how it feels when someone who adores games has his heart broken, again and again, by the very thing he loves. I think he thinks that developers often don’t consider that, and I think he’s right.

It goes without saying that I agree with Russ – we can’t return games, and many of them come either broken or full of flaws that are unconscionable in this day and age. Alpha Protocol is a recent example; contrary to what some have been saying I do not feel the same way about New Vegas. I just haven’t had many problems with it. There are far more egregious offenders out there, up to and including tier-one titles like Civilization V, which include actual honest to god game-breaking bugs that haven’t been patched yet (and an annoying opening movie that’s great once or twice, but that you can’t skip without editing a .ini file). So this isn’t another New Vegas post.

The only issue with which I diverge from Russ is the pragmatic one: in my opinion, most developers aren’t interested in making bad or broken games. But to understand why they do, you need to understand the developer/publisher relationship. The fact is, games often ship when the money runs out, or in time for Christmas, or when the publisher says so. It’s very rare for a publisher to accept the argument that a game is just not ready yet, that it needs six or eight more months, that a little more money will be the difference between a broken game and a successful one. It’s not like developers don’t make those arguments; publishers just don’t listen.

Why? Because publishers know what we all know: that games are not returnable commodities. That once we buy a broken one we’re stuck with it. And they take advantage of that.

Developers tend to love games – or at least love making games – as much as gamers love games. I haven’t talked to Chris Avellone since Alpha Protocol shipped, but he did mention something about telling me the “whole story” of the delay at some point in the future. “You’ll probably laugh,” he said. “I’ll just nod and drink heavily.” That in mind I suspect he’s as embarrassed by Alpha Protocol as anyone. But the fact is, developers are not often masters of their own destinies. The ones who are – like Valve and Blizzard – they can take all the time they want, and though it’s often years between games, what finally arrives is usually perfect.

The key point that Russ makes, however, kind of destroys the argument that it’s all publishers’ fault:

I know that some of you work overtime on this. I know you lose money. I know it sucks for you. And yet, I don’t care. The point at which you have to turn in overtime to create a patch that will fix a playability issue in a game that’s been released and sold to the public is the point at which you will have sold a defective product. If you’ve sold me a game that I cannot play, then I have lost money. It is only fair that you lose some too, in making it right.

Troika expatriates are still patching Vampire Bloodlines, even though their company has been out of business for years. Russ is basically saying that yeah, publishers may force your hand, but your name is on it. Even if it’s not your fault, even if the publisher doesn’t give you the money to fix it, your name is on it. You have a responsibility to fix it. End of discussion.

Unless you don’t care.

And if that’s the case… well, we saw what happened in 1983, the last time all the major developers stopped caring if they made quality products. Let’s not have a repeat of that. What else would I have to do?

About the author

Tap-Repeatedly Overlord Steerpike is a games industry journalist and consultant. His earliest memories are of video games, and hopes his last memories will be of them as well. He’s a featured monthly columnist with the International Game Developers Association, and is internationally published in an assortment of dull e-Learning texts and less dull gaming publications. He also lectures on games at various universities.

25 Responses to Developer is About to Die

Mr. Pitts is a wonderful writer and if I were to sum up his letter in a word, I’d use “sincere.” It’s not easy to write an open letter like that, especially so for an industry he unabashedly adores.

It’s not an easy problem to fix, though, is it? Does a future of hope lie within some redemption of the AAA developers/publishers, or is it with the indies, or somewhere in between? Too bad hindsight doesn’t have a forward-looking twin.

No matter how bleak things may seem, I take comfort in knowing that there exist today development houses the likes of Stardock, GSC Game World, CD Projekt, Irrational, or even older staples of western gaming like id, Bethesda and Valve. People who love games and who care, or at the very least give such an impression.

The thing is, it’s not just developers and publishers, there’s a third party to this game. Us. Consumers. The only reason they can ship broken products is that we keep buying them. A couple of years ago SEGA published Incredible Hulk game that was unplayable on Xbox 360. It had a game stopping bug in it. Sure, you could patch it several days later but if you were offline (like some 50% Xbox 360 owners are)? Tough luck.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts was a game published by Microsoft itself, exclusively for Xbox 360. If you had a SD television set, you couldn’t read any of the writing in the game. I don’t think that was ever patched.

Sure, one could argue that both those games sold modestly, but they were supposed to sell regardless of quality – one being a licensed game published in sync with the film of the same name, the other third instalment in a well respected franchise.

But what about Fallout 3? That game was a million seller. Hell, I even bought a collector’s edition on day one, knowing full well how bug ridden it will be. 5 DLC packs and Allah knows how many patches later, that game still freezes for a few seconds every couple of minutes on my PC. Reinstalled it and patched the hell out of it to no avail. Two weeks ago I tried to boot it to perhaps finish the last piece of the latest DLC pack, but the game wouldn’t boot. That’s when I uninstalled it. PS3 version, though? It had a game killing bug that essentially locked you up some five minutes before the end of the game. That was later fixed in a patch but you know, if you cam ehome on launch day and played through it straight in the next 30 hours, I imagine your disappointment was expressed through screaming.

And yet that game sold gazillions because after all, it IS a good game. But a broken, totally broken product. We keep buying that stuff, because we are OK with broken products, we are geeks even though we are now millions. Until we stop buying, just like it happened in the first Great Videogame Crash, they won’t stop doing it. Because it’s not that anyone sets out to make a bad or broken game, it’s just that the principle-of-good-enough (google it) has been set ridiculously low and has been going even lower in the last few years since all the consoles are online.

But how can we stop buying when it’s love? That’s what the publishers truly take advantage of. Not that you can’t return… but that you’ll buy, knowing it’s broken.

Armand10/29/2010

I don’t work in the gaming industry. Everything I’ve heard about it sounds like it’s a nightmarish work environment for many. With that in mind, I can speak of my industry: Graphic Design.

When a designer or design studio works on a large campaign, we will go through every line of copy, every picture, figure out how people from all walks of life will react to it, and so on. Nevertheless, I expect almost every job to have some surprise outcome or problem none of us were able to catch before it goes to print or launches.

As complex as my job can get, I don’t think it compares to the complexities of developing a video game.

What I’m getting at is, I think it’s nearly impossible to release a fully bug-free game. There are so many possibilities for making mistakes, and even the best intentioned game makers are only human.

This of course doesn’t excuse some of the more egregious releases, including the sort of examples Meho lists. What I’m getting at with this far-too-long a rant is people will make mistakes. Something will always slip through the testing cracks.

As long as a game developer is willing to deal with their mistakes and take the time to fix it in a working manner though, I won’t hold it against them. Not for very long anyway.

My primary interest in all this is to see the working conditions for game developers to improve. I think the best asset companies like this have are happy employees who feel invested in what they are producing, and thus are more likely to want to see a good product for consumers.

It’s an interesting question. When I think of polished, bug free games, you know, good products, I can think of, for instance Joe Danger, a downloadable PS3 game made by four people, or World of Goo, another one made by three people. I can also think of Half Life or Vanquish, made by big teams who have obviously invested a lot of time in playtesting. Love and dedication certainly is a good asset, but time and perseverence, not publishing when it’s not done is obviously almost a prerequisite. In this case, only Vanquish had an external publisher attached to itself and even there I am quite sure SEGA didn’t get to boss Shinji Mikami around. So, one of the rules should be: playtest until satisfied. Now how do we come to that point? Well, I guess the answer is the same: stop buying broken games. The thing is I certainly can’t stop and I know none of you can’t either…

Mat C10/29/2010

How much of an impact does patch culture have on all this?

Nowadays it seems the norm for a game to be released, a check list of bugs and faults compiled about it on the internet, then those bugs addressed at some point in the future. And that’s just the way things are. Given that that neither the internet nor the pressure from publishers to make money are likely to go away any time soon, is this an issue which is likely to be properly addressed?

Another issue I find raises a problem is the specialist media. For me, not enough reviews do a good enough job of highlighting games that are riddled with issues. Again pointing to New Vegas, I think we can all see what can happen when one or two people do raise those issues in a review.

The industry at large seems to have adopted patching broken games days or weeks down the line as being totally acceptable. I don’t think developers, publishers, consumers or the media are exclusive from one another in having to shoulder the blame.

Ernest10/29/2010

The only quibble I have is that the crash wasn’t in 1982. In 1982 games were emerging from the text games of Infocom into 8-bit graphics like M.U.L.E.

I don’t remember exactly when it was. Maybe 1988? But a lot of the companies that made dedicated game systems struggled–Nintendo, Atari, among others. Commodore, of course, went belly-up. So it must’ve been after the Amiga, which was circa 1989.

Matter of time until the Justice Dept starts an investigation against the industry.

The crash was in in 1983 – after the fall of Atari and just before the rise of Nintendo.

What Mat says about Patch Culture is on the money. I remember the first game I ever patched: Crusader – No Remorse. Great game. But it started crashing in the middle of one level and when I called tech support they actually mailed me a disk with a patch on it. Didn’t work, but hey.

The internet has created what Mat aptly calls Patch Culture; it’s simple to patch games now, and services like Steam make it easier still.

I don’t mind a game shipping with bugs or issues. They’re too complex to be totally flaw-free. but shipping an unplayable game… well, to Armand’s point, that’d be like launching a major ad campaign where the client’s name is misspelled, or where some image is overtly racist or offensive to some group. Except things like that are harder to fix.

Max "xtal" Boone10/29/2010

I think the only positive example of a patch culture is Blizzard.

I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that the best supported games of all time are World of Warcraft, Warcraft III, Diablo II and Starcraft.

That kind of patching, patching where you’re not fixing a broken game, but simply watching how a game evolves and then tailoring it to the needs of the users, that is acceptable– even impressive– but any other kind shouldn’t have to exist.

But hey, Meho said it: we’ll keep buying them. I know I will. Here’s an inconvenient truth: “gamers” are not a whole, not a single operating unit. Not everyone who plays video games peruses the blogosphere; half of them are too busy playing Modern Warfare 2. They don’t care about these problems because, to many, no such problems exist.

We can protest, even feel good about ourselves; the reality is that this industry is booming. For every Russ Pitts in the world there are a thousand more people merrily playing Guitar Hero 19: Pussycat Dolls, Wii Super Sports Resorts In Your Shorts, and Call of Duty 13: Contemporary Fighting Game 6: Downloadable Content With Zombies 4: Part 3.

Our crying falls on deaf ears, I’m afraid. My attitude isn’t a positive one but the truth often isn’t palatable. If there is such a thing as “The Industry,” then it is most definitely the rich upper crust sitting on their thrones, and to them the view looks pretty swell.

I’m just going to go about my life and enjoy what I can, being as responsible as I can.

Thanks for that great link SP! Maybe that’s why I was able to buy so many cool games back then–they had gone on sale b/c the companies had gone belly-up! Ah Suspended how I miss you. Still one of the coolest boxes ever: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/suspended.html.

Ernest did you have the Suspended box with the white plastic face mask?

wds10/30/2010

“Troika expatriates are still patching Vampire Bloodlines, even though their company has been out of business for years. Russ is basically saying that yeah, publishers may force your hand, but your name is on it. Even if it’s not your fault, even if the publisher doesn’t give you the money to fix it, your name is on it. You have a responsibility to fix it. End of discussion.”

So, basically, game developers don’t deserve to have lives. They should just work overtime, work unpaid, so you can have your perfect, flawless game.

I doubt you’d want the same principles applied to your work. I doubt you’d be very happy if your boss came in one day and told you you’d be working unpaid overtime for the next couple of months because quality kind of slipped in your latest work.

Nice try, WDS, but I never said perfect or flawless. In fact I distinctly said that I understand games will always ship with bugs and issues. And speaking as a person who is a professional in the industry and active in the quality of life debate I don’t appreciate the implication that I’m saying developers should have no lives. You need to read more carefully before you get snappy.

What I said, and what Russ Pitts is saying, is that developers have a responsibility to not ship broken, unplayable games. Your crack about “quality kind of slipped” is cute, but ridiculously out of context for this discussion. There’s a big difference between a game with some minor issues and a game like Alpha Protocol, which for most gamers was unplayable out of the box, and which sits largely unused on shelves because purchasers have no way of returning it and Obsidian hasn’t bothered to fix its issues.

When Toyota was caught selling cars that KILLED PEOPLE, I bet there was some freakin’ overtime being worked, probably unpaid. When Sony launched an ad campaign that was overtly racist and another that encouraged suicide, yeah, I guarantee some people at their ad agency worked a few late nights dealing with the backlash.

And frankly, if my boss came in and pointed out errors in my work along the lines of what we see in some games, I’d be embarrassed enough to work overtime, yeah. And I’d be thanking my stars that all I had to do was work overtime and not find another job.

But that’s just it, isn’t it? Obsidian can’t lose work because they don’t work for SEGA. Also, Obsidian can’t patch the game because 1) They are not asked (and paid) to do so by SEGA and 2) They don’t own the game, SEGA does, so even if they wanted to do it in their free time, they could just do, say, an unofficial patch for the PC version. My PS3 version will still stay broken as hell. It comes down to SEGA being quite happy to sell a broken, virtually unmendable product because, apparently they don’t expect it to sell anyway.

As for Bloodlines being patched by ex-Troika staff, this is the first I’ve heard about it, I thought both patching factions out there are essentially just hackers/ bedroom coders. I have never heard of any Troika people coding patches for Bloodlines and if it’s so, that’s awesome, but I think you might be wrong about it. What we do know is that some Troika people worked on Alpha Protocol which weirdly explains the broken state of these two games. But, from my personal standpoint, Bloodlines was MUCH more broken than Alpha Protocol (although I will admit I never tried the PC version of AP which I understand is the, er, brokenest of all versions), it missed textures and mission triggers among other things, it had a memory leak issue that slowed it down to a crawl after an hour’s play and there was a bug in it that killed the game after one of the missions and overcoming it was a matter of some really arcane rituals. Alpha Protocol, on PS3 at least was awful, but basically playable and I managed to finish it. The difference is, Bloodlines was better in terms of actual design. AP is not just a buggy game, it’s simply not designed very well.

But anyway, the net result is the same, both games sold like bottled feces. Sure, AP didn’t kill Obsidian and after New Vegas they will have more credit than before it, although I am really scared of what their Dungeon Siege 3 is going to look like. That series is hardly known for awesome storytelling or immersive worlds, so if the design is arse, it WILL kill Obsidian. Could it be that they are just a developer with almost no luck? KOTOR2 was rushed to get it out the door for christmas, AP was published in the state it was in and will never be patched… Perhaps they just have bad luck with publishers… I am dying to once hear those stories that Avellone will tell you, Matt. It will shed some light on this whole industry issue that frankly, seems to be leading towards the new Crash. Remember, gaming has never been as expensive as today – consoles are expensive, paraphernalia is expensive, you are required to have expensive HD or 3D screens, games are expensive and there are services that ask you to spend more and more money on stuff that once you were getting for free. If the industry continues making broken games, us, the consumers, might actually say “this is enough” and break it all in one year.

Armand10/30/2010

I keep hearing about Bloodlines’ various problems, but I played through the game twice and never had a problem. I didn’t even patch it as I didn’t have internet at the time.

Also, to imply Steerpike wants developers to work in crappy conditions with unpaid overtime is like saying Richard Simons wants people to eat junk food and get fat.

Finkbug10/30/2010

A new Troika game was biting into a delicious meat pie with fear of which bite would reveal the half-frozen ground pork. Sometimes the uncooked pork gave you worms, sometimes it didn’t, but it was always there.

Armand10/30/2010

At best, I get what you’re talking about only half the time Fink. ( :

Ernest10/30/2010

@Mike: yep. And the Deadline package that had all the cool stuff inside.

Thank you for this entry. It goes a long way towards summing up my frustration, and a little bit of my fear, regarding this entire FNV debacle.

Let us reframe it.

Say Call Of Duty 7: Falklands War is released. It recieves universal praise for the pretty graphics, epic sound design, tightness of mission design, etc. Oh sure, the plot is as weak as a wet paper bag, the characters may as well all be some guy called Dave, and the plot is just nonsensical, but hey, we’re not there for the story, are we?

So, why not Obsidian? This guy Avellone is the only one, *the only one*, that I have found in mainstream gaming who is making games with storylines that approach literature, characters you can remember, worlds that feel real. Molyneux, Meier, etc are making games for children. I’m grateful that there is someone in the industry making games for people who expect the same narrative standard they might get on HBO to be in a computer game. It isn’t much to ask.

When I played Fallout 3, it was pretty casual. I wondered around the wastes shooting people in the face, and had a terrific time. Fallout New Vegas though… that’s something different. I’ve had it a week and I’m 60 hours in. Every few hours it’ll crash on me and I’ll load straight back up without even realising what I’m doing.

Fuck the bugs. These guys at Obsidian are trying to do something here. Alpha Protocol was excellent, an brilliant story, once you got to know her. It’s what’s on the inside of these games that counts.

I think your comment frames the situation nicely, and does also explain why many gamers are willing to cut slack to some developers but not others.

The key with New Vegas is that the game is not broken. People need to stop saying that it is. It has a few bugs here and there. That’s it. Hey, I bought Dead Space yesterday to celebrate Halloween and it BLUESCREENED my computer within half an hour. All NV’s ever done is crash from time to time.

Would it be great if all games were flawless emeralds? Sure. Is it realistic? Definitely not. And your point that it’s worth surviving a few bugs to experience something with a genuinely deep, mature, well-written storyline is extremely strong.

I wish I’d had the chance to find the greatness you did in Alpha Protocol. I had to set it aside, as the bugs in that one made it quite unplayable for me.

Armand11/02/2010

Playing NV has significantly raised my interest in Alpha Protocol. After hearing how buggy it was, I pretty much deleted it from my mind. But now I’m actually considering it again. They’re never going to patch that game though, are they?

Hey Armand,
I would recommend that you try Alpha Protocol, bugs or not, if only to challenge yourself with the questions that it asks you as a gamer.

I personally didn’t have any bugs. In general I don’t have any problems with games, and never have, which makes me wonder what kind of weird-ass setups other players must have (my rig is very by-the-numbers – Intel Processor, standard Nvidia 9800GT, etc). But I learnt that I could muddle my way through a game with mediocre graphics, and frankly sub-par gameplay, if it has interesting gameplay ideas, an engaging narrative, and memorable characters that you care about. There were so many interesting choices along the way that as soon as the credits rolled, I loaded it back up again and went through it again with a different style of play.

Really, the lynching Avellone and Obsidian get over this is extremely unfair, when a game like Grand Theft Auto 4 gets new perfect universal praise, and it’s storyline is just a bunch of isolated scripts and ideas chucked in a blender and haphazardly reassembled.

Alpha Protocol, and Fallout New Vegas, will ask you what matters. Do you care about a game that is derivative, but flawless; or do you care about something that is flawed, but fascinating?

Armand11/03/2010

It’s funny you mention GTA4, as that game caused me more trouble on my PC than any other in the last couple years. Took three days just to get it running, and even then it was buggy and glitched.

If I see Alpha Protocol on a Steam sale or something I’ll pick it up though. I’m not ready to pay full price right now though.